Help - IFA appears to have transferred pension pots without written consent

[Deleted User]

IvanOpinion said:

scdandem said:

You need to set up a spreadsheet which lists everything you have, where you have it, dates of sales and purchases and other key events.  Its not a lot of work and you’ll be happy you have it.

Great idea, I love a spreadsheet!

How did we ever survive in the pre-spreadsheet era

...and how did we manage to have kids? 

https://www.economist.com/1843/2020/02/20/between-the-spreadsheets

JonathanBFS

Hello, I can’t quite believe the debate on this post. Being an IFA myself I can confirm this is the advisers fault no matter your personal opinion on what your expectations are. The adviser/admin has pressed the buttons without any review to the appropriateness of this transfer. He is the approved individual to confirm the transaction, no joe bloggs off the street can do this. I could do this, but absolutely without a shadow of a doubt do follow a rigorous process of which my clients would sign a terms of business and ultimately would agree to such a transfer.

I would challenge your RL Grips (assumed) to be a better home than the old mutual contract. You don’t have to transfer, an IFA could take over the servicing of this contract. 

scdandem

JonathanBFS said:

Hello, I can’t quite believe the debate on this post. Being an IFA myself I can confirm this is the advisers fault no matter your personal opinion on what your expectations are. The adviser/admin has pressed the buttons without any review to the appropriateness of this transfer. He is the approved individual to confirm the transaction, no joe bloggs off the street can do this. I could do this, but absolutely without a shadow of a doubt do follow a rigorous process of which my clients would sign a terms of business and ultimately would agree to such a transfer.

I would challenge your RL Grips (assumed) to be a better home than the old mutual contract. You don’t have to transfer, an IFA could take over the servicing of this contract. 

Well good for you. I hope you feel better for having got that off your chest and put forward your opinion in such a pleasant tone. 

fred246

Well I have learned something. I thought IFAs charged £1000s for filling a few forms out. It's obviously changed to charging £1000s for clicking a mouse.

gm0

This does raise a consumer advice question on the interlock of fact find compliance and validation requirements for transfer with Origo.  Pension and ISA pull.  And what the scam aware consumer should do.

You can't seek financial advice without providing a level of personal information.  Compliance case file needs also seem to compel the legitimate advice businesses to collect evidence around facts via direct contact with 3rd party (LOA) or screenshots/annual statements etc.   A scammer can impersonate this behaviour readily or soften it to the level required to get the mark to cooperate.  It appears LOA's are worthless as a control on rogue advisers or accidental jumping of the gun based so witholding those prevents nothing in terms of scam transfers or accidental ones (as in this example).   I did not know that until I read this thread.

One relies on the fact that the firm is FCA registered and not a clone and has also passed through some kind of onboarding with Origo to be "on the system".  And then on whatever checks an Origo recipient scheme makes on a transfer request which clearly don't include an end client confirmation step these days as old school paper and post processes might once have done

So a more general consumer information question would be "what is the key information" that YOU MUST NOT SHARE with a company while you get fully comfortable with them and wish to take their transfer advice - so that the targets for the electronic transfer request would fail validation before processing would not complete.  

I suspect that the requirements on the advisor for proof of facts and the convenience of this back end system may conflict and thus you may be dependent on the basic reputational and registration checks that you make.  A financial adviser whether good or bad is likely going to know the name of the company where the pension is held, but maybe not the account number, name, address, email, phone number and NINO.